955 Ghosts Of Ourselves.

I’ve only ever lost one game. Physically lost the cartridge. I’ve lost many many contests. I’ve had some stolen, and the one I count as lost might have been, but it’s the only one I don’t KNOW was stolen. Shanghai Pocket for the Gameboy Color is the game in question. I went to a lot of trouble to get the game. It wasn’t available in my shithole town, and you couldn’t just order stuff back then. It was a huge hassle. For the most part if it wasn’t on the shelf you didn’t get it. I always felt bad for losing it, but not because I didn’t play it enough. It was glued to me for a long time. Which is part of what made its dissapearance so odd. It was hardly out of my sight. But that’s all as may be. Why I bring this up is that I still have its box and papers, like most of my games. Except I have no game to put inside it. Or at least I didn’t. Recently I have found that the demand for old games has fallen sharply. So I was able to get a very nice copy for next to nothing. Apart from an upper case J written on the back of the game in sharpie the thing looks brand new. So that little hole in my heart has been filled.

I kind of want to find a nice Gameboy color to go with my others. My mom has my original one to play Tetris on. I used to have a spare, but I gave it away because I’m super nice, and awesome to be friends with. The old hardware is actually still pretty pricey if it’s in good shape. Heck, even the shitty ones are overvalued at the moment. I don’t know the why of that, but there we are. I’d kind of like to find a Pokemon one, but that seems unlikely. I suspect any of those that still exist are hoarded by collectors.

16 Comments

I have come to be very fond of Reggie over the last couple of strips. especially since Wes has come into the picture. He is as Ed said, “… he’s a dick, but he’s an honest dick.” Wes on the other hand seems low and dirty (http://betweenfailures.com/archives/archive/722-dissimilar). Reggie I think has slowly become one of my favorite characters and can’t wait to see him develope as a charater.

Also, I love how this comic slowly reveals more details about its characters over time, and it does it through dialogue and action rather than, exposition or flashbacks. Like with Nina, her history is clearly dynamic and has forged the person she is today, and we learning it not through telling but through showing. ‘The broken cheerleader”, and in this strip “who I used to be.”

Yeah, I am sure Wes has some type of redeeming quality. I always thought Reggie got a hard deal because everyone else was awesome. He is just a dude who plays too hard and dreams too big… And has a problem with setting things on fire accidently.

I’ve always thought of Reggie as a good example of a character that’s both a jerk and interesting and relatable. He’s ambitious, steadfastly confident, and strangely cheerful and optimistic. Like Mike, his flaws impede him instead of impeding others, and seeing him get righteous comeuppance when he deserves it actually makes him more sympathetic, especially when you see it crack his otherwise unflappable self-esteem.
He’s practically a self-made underdog. You want his character to develop just so he’ll get out of his own way.
Really, outstanding job, Crave.

I’ve just enjoyed this so much I read the entire archives in one go. Thank you for crafting a story that makes the characters seem like actual people that are worth caring about and not just composites of various super-human abilities and ridiculous body proportions. Makes a nice change from manga.
And as someone on venlaflaxine and lithium, may I humbly offer a suggestion for the depression thing? When I’m really bad my psychiatrist suggested a form of meditation where you focus exculsivly on sensations. With a bit of practice you can get to a point where all the negative crap your head refuses to stop coming up with is engulfed by the sensory information, leading to a brief period of rest. May not work for you, but hey. It’s really annoying to be told to keep hanging in there, so I won’t. Just hope that you do!

I’ve only ever lost one game too. A copy of Chrono Cross for the Playstation 1 back when I was in college. My drug dealer housemate swiped it the one day I forgot to lock my room’s door. Happened almost ten years ago and I’m still ticked off about it.

Don’t you hate it when you meet those people? You’ve finally fixed yourself to be someone you actually want to be, and then someone comes along that reminds you every day why you aren’t that person anymore. Sorta makes you feel good about the progress you’ve made as a person, but it’s sorta annoying to remember that part of your life every single day.

I don’t really need one. Between my SP and DS, I can already play every game made for a Nintendo handheld (barring 3DS, of course). But I recently got an SNES, and have been replaying “Pokemon Yellow” on it with a Super Gameboy. The SGB is cool, but the Pokemon games were made for linking, and I don’t have the hardware to do that. You can use a GBA to make trades on the GB/GBC Pokemon games, but you need a GBC cable. So I’ll need to get one of those, plus another Gameboy. That’s where the GBC comes in. I’m gonna either get one of them (I might as well, I want to get Gold or Silver and be able to do Mystery Gift), or I might just break the tabs on the SNES and get a Super Gameboy 2, which has a link port.

i can actually get you a pokemon GBC if it’s still there. i’ll get you a price. how about a trade then if i CAN get it, those batman comics i wanted, for the GBC. if not, you still haven’t gotten back to me on a price for those.